NASA TV Coverage Set for Next Soyuz Space Station Crew Launch

HOUSTON -- NASA Television will provide live coverage of next week's launch and docking of the next crew members who will fly to the International Space Station.

Tom Marshburn of NASA, Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency are scheduled to launch to the space station in their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft at 6:12 a.m. CST (6:12 p.m. Baikonur time) Wednesday, Dec. 19, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA TV launch coverage will begin at 5 a.m. and include video of that day's activities leading to the crew boarding its spacecraft.

The trio will dock the Soyuz spacecraft to the station's Rassvet module at 8:10 a.m. Friday, Dec. 21. NASA TV coverage of docking begins at 7:30 a.m. About three hours later, hatches will open between the Soyuz and the station. Marshburn, Romanenko and Hadfield will be greeted by Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford of NASA and flight engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin of Roscosmos, who have been living and working on the orbiting laboratory since late October. NASA TV's hatch opening coverage begins at 10:15 a.m.

Marshburn, Romanenko and Hadfield will remain aboard the station until May 2013. Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin will return to Earth March 15, leaving Hadfield as the first Canadian commander of the space station.

The full schedule of the Soyuz prelaunch, launch and docking coverage includes (all times Central):